Self-taught local artist, Cliff Mann, painted Timeless View in 2012 in honour of Huble Homestead's 100th anniversary. Now the image will be published in the 2014 edition of Splash: The Best of Watercolor.
Splash is an international book series with thousands of entries from around the world vying for the 99 top spots each year. Mann is No. 57 on the alphabetical list for the creative-solutions themed book.
Mann's work can be seen at Studio 2880, Frameworks Gallery, and Books & Co. and has been exhibited at the Museum of Northern British Columbia, Fort St. James National Historical Park and Groop Gallery. Featured in the Northern Art Initiative 2013 calendar is his painting called Silent Flight.
"Splash is a book that I have always gone to over the years for inspiration," said Mann. "It's a compilation of artists and just knowing that there was a book I would like to get into - that was always the one. So when I saw the call for submissions in a magazine, I had to do it. That was in October and I just found out and I'm extremely happy. I've gone through the list and the neat thing is every other painter on there has been published in magazines so I know the painters and that's pretty cool. It really hasn't sunk in yet. I guess I'm a bit taken aback because a lot of the painters are internationally-known artists. So that puts me on the same page overnight with these other artists and that's really neat."
Mann has painted off and on most of his life.
"Over the last couple of years I've made more of an effort to keep at it and I got my website started to try to keep inspiring myself," said Mann, who is a registered nurse working in mental health and teaching part-time at the University of Northern B.C. "I'm busy, so I'm painting well into the early hours of the morning."
For this edition of Splash the publishers offered up the challenge of finding creative solutions during the process of finishing a painting. The artists had to explain what those challenges were.
"I guess a lot of it was to figure out a way to paint the glass in the lantern in a realistic manner and the curtains - I had no idea how I would actually pull off the very intricate lace pattern," Mann said.
